Top White House Attorney Appears Before Grand Jury

By Peter Baker and Susan SchmidtThe Washington PostWASHINGTON

A top White House lawyer went before the grand jury investigating
President Clinton's ties to Monica S. Lewinsky Tuesday but refused to
answer certain questions, prompting another round of legal jousting with
independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, according to sources familiar with
the closed proceedings.

White House special counsel Lanny A. Breuer showed up at the federal
courthouse to testify about two hours after Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist refused an emergency White House request to intervene and
temporarily block his appearance Tuesday morning.

Breuer, who has coordinated much of the White House damage-control
efforts related to the Lewinsky investigation, spent about five hours with
the grand jury. He answered some questions related to the case while
declining to discuss subjects that he and his colleagues asserted are
covered by attorney-client privilege, the sources said.

At the end of the afternoon, Breuer, his private attorney, fellow White
House lawyers and a pair of Starr deputies convened for nearly an hour
behind closed doors with Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.
Johnson, who is overseeing the Starr probe, previously has rejected White
House claims of attorney-client privilege in the Lewinsky case and the
White House had been braced for another rebuff, likely to be followed by
another set of appeals, possibly all the way up to Rehnquist again.

But the day ended without any public indication of additional appeals
and a legal source said Breuer plans to be at the courthouse again at 10
a.m. Wednesday. Breuer declined to discuss the situation Tuesday. Asked how
he felt being the subject of such a high-profile battle, he joked, "I'm
honored."

The developments were the latest in what appear to be increasingly
futile attempts by the Clinton administration to prevent Starr from
interrogating people close enough to the president to know about his
relationship with Lewinsky. One by one, Starr has secured court rulings
affirming his right to question senior presidential aides, Secret Service
officers and now White House lawyers.

What remains uncertain is how important that testimony will be,
especially now that Clinton and Lewinsky have both agreed to provide their
own accounts to Starr. The White House suggested in legal papers filed at
the Supreme Court on Monday and made public Tuesday that such witnesses may
be peripheral at this point.

"The publicly announced recent agreements (Starr's office) has concluded
for the testimony of the President and Ms. Lewinsky will ensure that the
grand jury will hear the evidence relating to the merits of the
investigation while this important legal issue is being resolved," wrote
attorney W. Neil Eggleston, the private lawyer who is representing the
White House in the attorney-client fight. "Indeed, it is quite likely that
(Starr's office) may obtain from the President some, if not all, of the
factual information it has sought to date from White House counsel."

On the other hand, third-party witnesses may help resolve what promises
to be a fundamental clash between the versions of events provided by
Clinton and Lewinsky.

Lewinsky has told prosecutors that she will testify that she had a
sexual relationship with the president and that they discussed ways of
disguising that during the Paula Jones lawsuit, according to legal sources.
Clinton testified in the Jones case and repeated on national television
that he never had sexual relations with Lewinsky, and aides said he has no
intention of changing his account when he testifies from the White House on
Aug. 17.

Still, it is not clear that Clinton would have confided any intimate
secrets to Breuer. Starr appears to want to ask Breuer and other White
House lawyers about their damage-control strategy sessions early in the
investigation and about their attempts to interview grand jury witnesses or
their private attorneys.

Starr argued in his own brief filed at the Supreme Court that any
further postponements would not be in the national interest. "The costs of
delay here extend beyond the adverse effects on an important
investigation," he wrote. "The Nation is entitled to its prompt
conclusion."

Rehnquist agreed there was no reason to delay Breuer's testimony. In an
oral order Tuesday morning, he declined to issue a temporary order blocking
Breuer's grand jury appearance while the White House asks the full Supreme
Court to hear the question of whether attorney-client privilege applies to
government lawyers working for the president. An appeals court agreed with
Johnson that it does not.